Rachel Braun Scherl, managing Partner, Entrepreneur, SPARK Solutions For Growth, will kick of the first day of Hygienix 2025 with her presentation, Entrepreneurs in Women’s Health: The Dual Challenge of Surviving and Scaling. Building women’s health companies requires a unique combination of vision, skill, resilience, and creativity. To determine what separates founders in this space from others, primary research was conducted. Scherl’s research team interviewed over 100 founders, academics, HCPs, and investors focused on how to survive and thrive while building women’s health companies. That work was done primarily during the years of COVID. A clear pattern emerged demonstrating the challenges of fighting stigma while building businesses and driving social change. These patterns were consistent regardless of the type of companies evaluated: consumer, device, digital, and care delivery.

This presentation will be followed by a panel discussion of female entrepreneurs in the feminine hygiene category including Olivia Ahn, co-founder of Planera, Scherl, Marilyn Califano, CEO of Hempress Hygienics and Greta Meyer, co-founder and CEO of Sequel.